Lot Essay
The Amsterdam still-life painter Jacob van Walscapelle is most admired for his luxuriously over-abundant floral pieces which are rendered with an almost microscopic attention to detail. Although he seems to have studied briefly with Simon Kick, his mature paintings reflect the profound impact of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, whose works heralded a new era of flower painting in the Netherlands sometimes known as 'pronkstilleven' or 'abundant still lifes'. De Heem's influence on Walscapelle is especially apparent in the way in which he, like de Heem, creates a sense of monumentality in his still life through the subtle manipulation of color, with brilliantly colored blossoms pushing forward and darker colored flowers reaching into the background.
The Avery painting is one of the artist's finest and most beautifully preserved works. It is very close, as Fred G. Meijer has observed (in private correspondence), to a signed painting in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, which includes an identical window reflection in its glass vase. Another still life by Walscapelle, in The National Gallery, London, displays a comparable sense of movement to that found in the Avery bouquet, as well as similar straggling ears of corn, itself a recollection of de Heem.
The Avery painting is one of the artist's finest and most beautifully preserved works. It is very close, as Fred G. Meijer has observed (in private correspondence), to a signed painting in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, which includes an identical window reflection in its glass vase. Another still life by Walscapelle, in The National Gallery, London, displays a comparable sense of movement to that found in the Avery bouquet, as well as similar straggling ears of corn, itself a recollection of de Heem.